Biola Alumnus’ Innovative iPhone App Helps Students Learn Greek

Brent Wejrowski’s iPhone app almost ready for second release

Former Greek-language student Brent Wejrowski (‘08) knows how difficult it is to learn the ancient language and to retain the linguistic skills over a long period of time.

Without a reliable study tool on the market, Wejrowski, who received a degree in biblical studies, developed the innovative Greek-language iPhone application (app) “Mimnesko” to assist students in developing vocabulary skills, as well as to maintain his knowledge of the language.

“One of my aims was to make Mimnesko easy and fun to use,” said Wejrowski.

Since its release in October 2013, the app has been downloaded by users on five continents, including Africa, Asia and South America.

The second version of Mimnesko is almost ready for release and Wejrowski believes that it will help make the app a forerunner for Greek study tools.

“I will be releasing some design enhancements that will make it really interesting and fun to use,” said Wejrowski.

Mimnesko means “I remember,” and contains the entire New Testament and texts of the Church Fathers, such as Second Clement and the Didache, in Greek. Despite catering to a niche audience, Wejrowski has received a lot of positive feedback from users.

“Mimnesko is really clean and easy to use,” said Biola senior Jake Di Santo, who has used the app since August 2014. “It’s helped me to focus on specific words that have been more difficult to memorize and been such a useful organizing and learning tool.”

Mimnesko utilizes a flashcard system of operation, and while flashcard stacks are quite common among language apps, it is unique in the way users can create and categorize their own lists of specific Greek words. The app allows the user to group specific words together based on the frequency they appear in a text, or the difficulty the user has in remembering them — assigning a color-coded difficulty rating to every word.

“You learn vocabulary by repetition, not by studying for an hour,” said Jon Lunde, professor of biblical and theological studies at Biola’s Talbot School of Theology. “So to be able to have your vocabulary there in a digitized form that you can rate, with regard to frequency and difficulty, is fantastic. I think it would be a great tool for any student trying to memorize their Greek vocabulary.”

Mimnesko is currently available for iPhone and can be purchased from the iTunes App Store for $4.99. Wejrowski has aspirations to expand the app to Android in the future and also produce a Hebrew language app, although his primary focus is still on the design and usability of Mimnesko. Information and updates are available on the officialMimnesko website.